


Champagne and Roses

by The_Spiral_Staircase



Category: David Bowie (Musician)
Genre: M/M, Rock and Roll, Sexy Times, Stardom, The Rolling Stones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 01:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13776531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Spiral_Staircase/pseuds/The_Spiral_Staircase
Summary: Tonight David is the very spirit of the present age. Mick is fearless and bold, adventurous and willing. What a wonderful night to be young and hip!





	Champagne and Roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [topumasum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/topumasum/gifts).



 

 

King Mick feels safe at court and forgets he doesn’t hold his wine so well.

              The Space Invader loves the camera and is loved back

 

 

CHAMPAGNE AND ROSES

 

 

It’s 1973 and Rock ‘n’ Roll wants fresh blood to stay alive. At 26, David Bowie is certainly not a débutante, but he’s not telling anyone and although he struggled for some time before, he is now definitely perceived as the new R’n’R hearthrob.

He’s young, but doesn’t really look young, he looks Beauty, eternal. What he does to himself looks art, art people can buy. His fans dig out his previous albums and they all become love in the present tense: David Bowie, David Gabriel Rossetti, David Diva, David Stardust! At last, life has dealt cards fairly and now David is holding four lucky aces in his princely hand.

First row in the crowd, at a concert of Bowie’s spring leg tour, Mick Jagger is watching the show with his manager. Mick isn’t much older than David, but he’s been famous and successful with his Stones for years now, and he’s come to see what’s new.

Jagger sees Bowie’s game with insider eyes: Ziggy can’t fool him, Jagger is no fan, he’s a professional, and a long-sighted one. Bowie could be a major adversary for him, but Mick knows that sometimes the best strategy doesn’t rely on striking war, but rather on wooing the princess to a mutually convenient… agreement.

There he is, backstage, after the show. Still full decked in his flamboyant Ziggy attire, Bowie turns in his chair and gets up like a Dietrich to hug Jagger as he were an old friend. He doesn’t smell human at all and he tastes like hairspray and powder, feels electric to the touch but sounds dangerously soft-spoken. Mick determines to invite this Dame to court on the nearest occasion.

At only 30, Mick’s perfecting his art as a showman and a womanizer and he can certainly be dubbed a girl-eater. He learned to be patient, but he can be a very quick grabber, and he is a good judge of personalities. His assumption on Bowie is quite disenchanted: he thinks he can see David’s bluff under lots of glitter, lippy and eyeshadow. No real ambiguity here, and absolutely no uncertainty, what they’re actually both most attracted to is just one thing: success.

Jagger IS successful, at the head of his powerful band-machine. He’s respected, in a way, but the last thing he desires by now is to become respectable. Showing transgression proved business to him. Monsters like showbiz, the press and parental society have all chewed at him and at those around him, but Mick knows how to chew back. He knows how to stir up controversy and turn tables on old men depicting him as someone who spends his day shooting up drugs and corrupting young minds with satanic messages. Actually, the mind is one of the aspects Mick values more, and he certainly could never be properly classified as your average user, as he shoots up on _cool._

Mick loves the prayer in the fans’eyes when they worship at the altar of Cool: “I want to be with you, I want to have you and then be you, as I like you so much I could eat you, and still not have enough”.

Bowie’s so contemporary with his many-sided appeal: since the world took notice of him, philosophers could as well have stopped debating on the sex of angels, as _cool_ is not to be restricted in male/female categories, and David’s got it, in tons.

Mick’s invited David to a Stones concert in Newcastle. Not only did he pay for the hotel room, but he also sent up roses and champagne and of course his gesture didn’t go unnoticed, David thinks, while reading the ‘Love, Mick’ note with a singularly vulpine smile. He really likes the roses, though.

They go out to dinner. The entourage surrounds them, but Jagger maneuvres his colourful guest to sit by his side.

Bowie smiles like an imp, and he's beaming, but is never loud. He hardly eats and just sips his wine like a well-behaved girl, listening and looking on with sparkling eyes, smoking graciously and moving for all the world like a fucking Siamese cat. Mick eyes him like a young bulldog, and after a while he finds himself thinking he really likes this chap much more than he expected to. So he puts his own glass down: better concentrate on conversation, not that he has to make an effort for that, Bowie’s so funny and witty that conversation with him is a treat, and Mick feels refreshed: a welcome change from the fans’ trite adulation or the journalists’ venom, and a relief from the groupies’ endless babbling and cloying baby-talk, not to mention the tricky and painful handling of serious relationships. Hmmm… What is this? This doesn’t feel like masculine solidarity, and sure isn’t making friends over beer: Mick feels a tension to be on best behaviour, whatever it means for the two of them. And he knows they’re doing their job, their type of job, even now, in the public eye. But not like fellow businessmen talking shop, no, nothing as stinky as that. Rather, this conversation is a show in itself, like fine theatre.

“Oh, it certainly looks like you’re awful lots of Yang!”

“Things that go ‘round in pairs usually… Who should be awful lots of Yin, then, you now?”

“Oh well… I can do _that_ , yes…. I guess they’re both red hot dance-inspiring material… I mean, I could swear I’ve seen you _be_ that on stage, you know?”

 “We-e-el-l…. It’s rather those principles surrounding you sometimes, and becoming what you’re doing, like writing a riff or… Oh! Those fucking flashes! They’re really going at it like crazy, tonight!”

“They’re hungry for their favourite fodder, those poor loves! Shall we give them some?”

Just some flirting and some strutting in front of the cameras? Oh yes, they look at each other mischieviously with a mute understanding: let’s fake some transgressive passion, let’s almost kiss for the papers… Let’s give the universe some good ol’ harmony! ………. F. L. A. S. H. !!!!!

Further into the evening, Mick has retrieved his glass quite a few times after all, and he finds himself trying to focus on Bowie’s profile and thinking unprofessional thoughts: how strange for this intelligent, beautiful creature to masquerade as so… disturbing. How strange they’re both fathers and their eyes wander towards female flesh, and yet… Luckily, Bowie cracks jokes and speaks louder in Mick’s ear, not in his former fey, soft voice, but in a laddish South London accent. A proper fellow Brit, this, not some doll from Mars…

The evening is drawing to a close, isn’t that a shame, when everybody has finally warmed up. David and Mick are no exception: they’re laughing and leaning closer to hear each other in the noise of the room, and… doesn’t the redhead’s hair and neck smell kind of delicious?

Then everybody’s getting up, it’s time to go. The Stones leave tips and signed napkins on the table and wave back to people saying goodbye. But fans have also come to the table asking for Bowie’s autograph, gushing and calling him Ziggy, and Ziggy obliged.

Cars are waiting outside and Mick escorts David to the limo. They step in quickly, chased by the photographers’ flashes, the car door barely closing and off they drive already.

Falling back comfortably on their seats, they let out sighs of relief: the working night is over, they can relax. For a long moment, then, they look at each other. A smile lingers in Bowie’s made-up eyes as he softly chews on his own thin lip and says nothing. The hotel isn’t far.

Mick turns to the window glass and sees nothing but the beautiful reflection of his doubts, so he turns back with a small, quiet sigh.

Then, like a naughty starfish, Mick’s hand slowly finds its way down David’s forearm, and the two men watch it move together, as it had a will of its own. When their hands finally touch, Mick’s hand is cold, while David’s is warm and dry, and suddenly holds on tight, so that a tiny gasp escapes Mick’s lips. They chuckle, then look at each other again. They can feel the limo turning and stopping at traffic lights. Mick looks at David’s lips, then leans on, but David lifts up their joined hands to stop him mid-air: “There are no cameras to snap now, what are you doing?” is his giggly mock warning.

“Fuck the cameras” mutters Jagger, almost on David’s mouth, and then he kisses him.

Nothing like memories of his boys’school or of power games with other males. It’s more like kissing a woman, only with different scent and a mysterious power just waiting to unfold, a hot flower which comes alive and sexily kisses back. Cigarette and strawberry, and the new flesh of a young super creature. The car rolls on, the kiss doesn’t end, as they come up closer in each other’s embrace: their bodies feel so lean but strong, under their silken light clothes. Their tongue tips meet and greet and come again, and their eyes they had closed, open up to each other’s reflection and for Mick it’s like falling. David’s eyes look so unique, and intelligent and just a bit surprised. So when they kiss again it’s personal, it’s discovering new land.

Mick feels a yearning blossom inside his chest, just as a needy pulse awakens in his groin, so he grasps at the fluffy hair on the back of David’s head, breaking the kiss to breathe in his ear:

“You aren’t really this foxy furred everywhere, are you?”

David doubles up chuckling, then looks sideways managing a cheeky reply: “Well, I don’t think you’re about to discover too soon!”

“You don’t want me to come up?”

“I do, but there’s friends, people. We can just… ”

“I’m with people too, what do we care…”

The car’s stopped at the hotel, they hear the chauffeur getting out and soon he’ll be opening the car door for them.

“Separately… the press is a bitch here…”

“You go first, then.”

“0K.”

Mick gets out of the limo and gestures at the chauffeur to go and get David from the other side, then disappears into the hotel entrance, bringing a bustling little crowd with him.

A few minutes later, David sneaks in, stopping briefly before the hotel’s revolving door to sniff the clean night air, then he smiles to himself and steps triumphantly inside, just at the centre of the entrance rug.

 

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt at pure fanfiction, although based on some real facts: Jagger checking out Bowie’s live performance is a true fact, as are the following invitation, the showy homage and the meeting in Newcastle. That much is true. The rest is sweet, sweet fiction, which gave me the whim to write this, so I might not have been very accurate, but… I hope it tickles you!


End file.
